PORTSMOUTH — Seacoast-area residents are showing a disturbing lack of concern Thursday, despite their awareness of the impending Mayan apocalypse on Friday.

Knowing the panic shopping that usually occurs when there are forecasts of boring blizzards, ho-hum hurricanes and minor nuisance power outages, I struck out on Thursday expecting to find droves of people stockpiling supplies to ride out the end of the world. For months now, popular culture has promoted the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, which is supposedly the end-date of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar.

While everyone I spoke with was aware of the supposed Mayan prophecy, they were all quick to laugh when I asked them whether they were taking it seriously.

My first stop was Market Basket on Woodbury Avenue. Before I even got in the grocery store, I saw a Salvation Army bell-ringer soliciting donations from customers. I asked him what good a couple extra bucks would do when the world ends, and he said he was confident the world was not, in fact, ending.

“I think I’ll be around tomorrow, and the day after and hopefully a long time after that,” said the bell-ringer, Steve Szabo of Stratham.

Clearly Szabo hadn’t seen the prophecies, the movie “2012” starring John Cusack or those Facebook posts showing forecasts predicting high temperatures with a chance of hellfire and brimstone on Friday.

Customers exiting Market Basket weren’t quite up for talking about the end of the world. Then I had a brilliant idea. What is the quintessential place to go to stockpile for an apocalypse? How about a place that sells batteries by the 40-pack, or 7-pound, 4-ounce cans of beans? That’s right: BJ’s.

I felt the promise BJ’s held upon driving into the parking lot. I immediately saw a woman with a cart chock full of groceries. Balanced on top was a 36-pack of Ramen noodles. Clearly, this was a woman who was stocking her pantry in case it was the last time she’d ever get to go shopping again.

Alas, Pamela Grotenhuis of Nottingham said she simply likes to buy her food in bulk. However, she did provide some perspective on the whole “end of the world” thing. She said it could mean an end of an era, or a philosophical change, and that the world could become a better place after the Mayan apocalypse.

“I just believe the ending is a state of mind,” she said.

If the experts are to be believed, the Mayan fad has no basis in fact. Mayan expert Dr. Walter Witschey of Longwood University in Farmville, Va., said the Mayans never forecast the end of the world.

“It appears they were saying a very important king, who was living when the inscription was written, was so important that he would still be worshipped in 13.0.0.0.0. That’s like saying 1,000 years from now, George Washington will still be so important that we’ll celebrate him in the year 3,000,” he said. “They said nothing about end of days, nothing about 13 being the final cycle, nothing about apocalypse, nothing about astrological predictions of any sort.”

While Witschey appears to have the credentials to speak on the matter, I still wasn’t convinced. So I turned to one of my high school friends, Ian Czop, who was planning an end of the world party to go out in style just in case the prophecy did come true.

“It’s strange to me that no one else has really taken stock in this,” he said. “There’s a myriad of terrible things that could go wrong when the planets align, one being crust displacement. That’s a real thing.”

Czop, citing the “documentary” film “2012,” said the Mayan apocalypse could also trigger the eruption of supervolcanoes and solar flares that knock out all communications. Instead of running for cover, though, he said he thought it would be best to spend his last night on pre-apocalypse Earth with his best friends.

“It’s out of my hands. It’s out of my control,” he said. “It gives me a good reason to have an end of the world party, which I thought would be a pretty cool idea.”